No date with World Series destiny for New York Yankees

Tuesday 6 November 2001 11.31 EST
First published on Tuesday 6 November 2001 11.31 EST

New York was stunned into silence yesterday - a silence that in a normal year would be called shocked, even grief-stricken.

The cause was a sporting defeat, but this was no ordinary sporting defeat: the New York Yankees, the most successful team in the history of American sport, were beaten at the last gasp of the baseball World Series by the Arizona Diamondbacks, a team only in business since 1998.

The Yankees were on the brink of their fourth successive championship, their 27th in all, until the Diamondbacks scored two runs at the end of the deciding game for a 3-2 win. This is not unreasonable behaviour, except that such victories are a Yankee speciality. Their triumphs are a tradition of the American fall to rank alongside Halloween and Thanksgiving.

And this particular autumn, baseball, and the Yankees in particular, have self-consciously asserted themselves as the embodiment of the defiance of both city and country.

No US institution has attached itself quite so firmly to the flag: a tattered Stars and Stripes found in the World Trade Centre flew over Yankee Stadium during the team's home games. A sense of manifest destiny began to attach itself to their progress.

This has been encouraged by Mayor Rudy Giuliani, a fervent Yankees' fan, and by mawkish journalists filling acres of newsprint.

Some, like Andrea Peyser of the New York Post were still at it, even in defeat: the Yankees "did it for every fireman, inches from a pension, who put everything on the line ... for every cop who showed up from nowhere to lend a hand ... "

Those watching the TV pictures from Arizona in the bars of Third Avenue seemed so certain of victory that when the Diamondbacks initially went ahead, they assumed it was merely an essential part of the storyline leading to New York's triumph over adversity. Reality dawned just before midnight on Sunday.

So yesterday was another sombre-seeming morning in the city. But it was hard, as ever, to disentangle what was in people's minds: the mood of the times; the baseball; or the reality of commuting to work on a chilly Monday.

A sharp wind made the smoke from Ground Zero more bitter and pervasive than ever. A small police group was standing around and chatting on Canal Street. One was louder than the rest: "You know, baseball, you can't, you know, get worked up with all this." He gestured towards the devastation. "But jeez, the Yankees."